The patients and staff of Hôpital Sacré Coeur are deeply grateful to the Institute for Technology in Health Care for their generous 2021 grant of $56,616.00 to fund the completion of Phase 1 of the important Electronic Medical Records (EMR) installation.
This award is supported by a grant from The Institute for Technology in HealthCare, a non-profit
organization, located in Washington, DC. The Institute for Technology in HealthCare is concerned with the use of technology to benefit and stimulate others in health care. For more information about The Institute for Technology in HealthCare please visit the website at www.ithcawards.org.
Medical records constitute a critical foundation of healthcare institutions and have the potential to improve access to information and quality of patient care. Ready access to reliable, up to date and accurate patient histories support timely diagnoses, appropriate therapies, and treatment plans. The majority of developed countries use electronic medical records to ensure optimum efficiency and effectiveness.
For low resource countries, such as Haiti, such technology remains beyond reach. Thanks to the Institute for Technology in Health Care, Hôpital Sacré Coeur has begun the establishment of an EMR system. Consequently, Hôpital Sacré Coeur remains on track to eliminate the costly process of incomplete and missing patient histories that compromise case management efficiency, subvert accurate clinical data interpretations, and present the near certain probability of physical destruction from climatic elements and varmints.
After careful analysis of the available options, Hôpital Sacré Coeur chose the Bahmni OpenMRS Distro System, a product of Mekom Solutions. Bahmni provides a full hospital management system with lab, billing, pharmacy, PACS (Picture Archiving and Communicating System) necessary for handling radiology test results, and other integrated features.
Mekom sees the Hôpital Sacré Coeur project as a landmark Bahmni implementation that requires the dedicated staffing and adequate prioritization in place at Hôpital Sacré Coeur. Mekom also anticipates multifold benefits to the greater healthcare arena, not only in terms of the infrastructure’s internal benefits — particularly low resource countries, but also in consideration of the output of valuable healthcare data for real time and research application.
During the intensive segment of Phase 1, executives from Holy Name’s Information Technology department partnered with software engineers from Mekom to program the system for Hôpital Sacré Coeur’s need for an accurate revenue tracking of patient care and supply chain management. Part of that process was an in-depth configuration and customization of the ERP component to allow for adequate and detailed in-app display of the patient billable activity, reports, and data ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pharmaceuticals dispense tracking including alerts for inventory restock. In addition, the configuration stage allowed for an exhaustive registration process, Metadata inventory, and management of patient attributes such as address entries and other relevant identifier types.
The system has now been aligned on functionality, workflow, built specifics and a go-live strategy has been developed. With Phase 1 completed, the groundwork is set to integrate an exhaustive registration process to be more fully implemented and tested in Phase 2. Phase 2 begins in the second quarter of 2022 with superuser training, and a product rollout slated for the pediatrics department as the pilot model for demonstration and testing. Phase 3 involves expansion of the system to multiple HSC departments and the inclusion of radiology and clinical lab data.
Upon completion of all three phases of this project, Hôpital Sacré Coeur will have enacted a game changer in Haitian hospital management systems for onsite use and in sharing critical healthcare data with the global community. Both end results will enhance and save lives.
